Nutrition for Health and Sports
by Dr. Clyde Wilson 
www.DrClydeWilson.com

Articles:

February 28, 2010:

The Top Three Sports Nutrition Mistakes
Every athlete has different nutritional needs, but there are three common mistakes that no athlete should fall victim to, all having to do with simultaneous excess and infrequency: Protein, carbohydrate, and salt. Studies with muscle fibers, mice, and New York City Police Officers, show that muscles grow twice as fast when protein is available in small amounts all the time, as opposed to large amounts all at once. This is why a little protein in every meal and even in snacks goes a long way towards recovery and training adaptation. Muscle can build at rate of 20-30 Calories per hour, so protein coming into your bloodstream faster than that just creates expensive urine. Then a few hours later the body is low in protein and starts breaking down. Avoiding too much all at once and too little through your day will pay dividends. The second big mistake is trying to fuel up your body with carbohydrate in too short a time. Active tissues (everything other than body fat) can absorb 10 Calories per minute (half of this going to muscle), so having more than 600 Calories in a meal 40-60% carbohydrate will just over-flow your blood sugar, driving up insulin, which drives up your body fat as your blood sugar clears out. The result is low energy in your muscles and your mind. Whenever you get tired after eating, you just robbed yourself of thought, muscle, life span, and gained body fat, all at the same time, by trying to fuel too quickly. On the other hand, after a few hours, an athlete’s blood sugar starts to run low so they should eat a meal or snack that contains some carbohydrate. As with protein, avoid too much all at once and too little through your day. The third big mistake I commonly see has to do with salt. Many athletes have no idea how much they are perspiring during training because they have never weighed themselves before and after a hard workout. Every 2 lb loss during exercise corresponds to a liter or quart of perspiration, which contains 800 mg of sodium. But since there is only one-fourth the amount of salt in sweat as the body fluid that sweat comes from, sweating results in salt concentration going UP in the body. This is why athletes should not consume salt during exercise unless they are replacing at least half of their fluid losses during that exercise. And no one should ever consume more fluid than they are losing. Avoid both salt and fluid excesses by pacing yourself instead of consuming a lot all at once. We will be going through each aspect of nutrition in more detail in future months, but if you avoid the three top sports-nutrition mistakes, you are well on your way to nutritional success. See my sports nutrition videos on protein building, carbohydrate fueling, and hydration on at www.youtube.com/DrClydeWilson, which you can link to through my web site www.DrClydeWilson.com

January 20, 2010:

Complete Sports Nutrition: WHAT, WHEN & WATER
There is an obvious need for sufficient calories during intensive training. Not so obvious are the specific macronutrient and micronutrient needs of the body and the fact that many nutrients are not easily stored by the body, forcing us to consume healthy food regularly (several times per day, as opposed to just one large meal per day). The more balanced an athletes meals, and the more evenly they are spaced throughout the day, the fewer the calories that an athlete needs to eat. There is of course a lower limit to this, but typically an athlete that is not eating healthy balanced meals evenly spaced in their day must eat 25% or more calories compared to an athlete that is eating balanced meals and pacing their calories. Balance comes down to unsaturated fats, moderate (10-25% of total calories) protein, whole grain starches and fruits/vegetables. Caloric pacing comes down to not eating more than 600 Cal at any given time and not going more than a few hours without eating at least a small healthy snack. Athletes will have an appetite that exceeds their caloric needs; for this reason if an athlete does not eat a significant amount of vegetables in each lunch and dinner they are likely to overeat and actually gain body fat during the training season. I know many athletes personally who have experienced this problem: Gaining body fat whenever they start training harder. The last piece of the equation is drinking 1 Liter of water for every 1000 Cal in the diet PLUS replacing one's perspiration losses during training. You estimate your perspiration losses by weighing yourself before and after exercise and adding this to the weight of the fluids you drank during exercise between the weigh ins (1 Liter i.e. 32 oz of fluid weighs about 2 lb). There are 250 mg of sodium (1/4 teaspoon of table salt) in each Liter of perspiration. That thumbrule will help you determine whether or not you should consider adding salt to your diet. If you eat out or add salt to your meals you likely to not need to intentionally increase your salt intake, but if you don't then it might be necessary in order to regain your hydration status. Excess salt is bad for health, but so is a severe shortage of salt from high levels of training. What, When and Water. All three must come together to provide the basis for your training. There are detailed equations available from a variety of sources to determine caloric needs during specific types of training, but they only give you a ballpark estimate since they do not take into account differences in athlete's physiology or the details of how they eat (what, when and water).  There is no cookie-cutter answer to a rigorous sports nutrition program. Instead you have to look at your over-all nutrition pattern. I have several detailed handouts to help athletes navigate this process, which can be found on my website on the "downloads" page www.DrClydeWilson.com

Biography:

In high school, I lifted weights all the time. My best friend's father was a former Olympic athlete in weight lifting and taught us to train and eat like monsters. My friend and I would call each other up and yell at the other person if he was not chewing on a mouth full of food at the moment he picked up the phone. We told each other stories about how the only breaks we took from eating were to go to the bathroom and lift weights. My exercise and nutrition philosophy was very simple: More is better.

A few years later, in the US Navy, my doctor on the aircraft carrier told me that I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, was class three obese and that I needed to be on medication. I didn't like the idea of going on medication if I could fix the problem myself, so I started including cardiovascular exercise in my training and drastically improved my nutrition. Instead of brown sugar, I put fruit on my oatmeal. Instead of syrup, I put peanut butter on my pancakes. Instead of greasy eggs, I ate hard-boiled eggs and removed the yolks. Within four weeks, my blood pressure and cholesterol levels were still high, but in the normal range and I did not need to go on medication. I could not believe how quickly my health improved but what was even more amazing to me, was how much stronger I became. I had been struggling to squat 300 lbs for half of a decade and now I was squatting 400 lbs within a few months and simultaneously unintentionally lost over 10 lbs of body fat. I realized that what we put into our bodies has a profound impact on how our body functions.  

This experience is the driving force behind everything that I do. I studied cell biology and chemistry at Stanford and now do research at UCSF in order to understand health at the deepest level possible. My conclusion is that anyone can understand how the body works and how to keep it healthy if they receive that information in an effective, clear and concise way. My courses, seminars and personal consults are all based on this belief, and the feedback has been amazing. I was at first worried that mentioning molecules and biological processes would scare everyone off. But quite the opposite is true. When I started giving talks on how the body regulates carbohydrate fueling of muscle, how eating to minimize diabetes simultaneously minimizes body fat stores, or why muscle growth requires proper hydration, people felt empowered to take this information and make decisions on their own to improve their health.  

I have now teamed up with the Sports Medicine Institute (SMI) to develop a new Center for Human Nutrition and Exercise Science. It is my goal to make this Center the most effective and useful resource possible for everyone in the community, linking the rapidly-expanding wealth of scientific information to the publics' increasing need to understand what generates improved health and why. My personal interest in lifting weights like a monster has not left me either, and much of my work focuses on the link between optimum health and performance. While health is a goal in and of itself, I also use health as a tool to facilitate my weight lifting habit. But instead of training and eating like a crazed monster in high school, I now use total health to squat, deadlift and bench a 1250 lb total while working way more than full time with as much energy at midnight as when I get up before 6 AM. I believe everyone can achieve more of their personal goals using health as their personal tool.

We can all become our own health monster!

Resume:

School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco

Food Facts, Fads and Pharmacology, Biochemistry 160.01, 1 unit, 2004-present
Created a new course surveying the literature on popular nutrition topics (fad diets, low-cal sweeteners, etc).

School of Medicine, Stanford University

Food Facts, Fads and Pharmacology, Interdisciplinary Medicine 225, 1 unit, 2007-present
The same course I teach in the UCSF School of Medicine.

Department of Athletics, Stanford University

Analysis of Human Movement, Athletics 187, 4 units, 2004-present
Re-designed a course describing the anatomy, molecular and cellular biology associated with human movement. Sports Nutrition with Clinical Applications, Athletics 199, 2 units, 2005-present
Created a new course in which students discuss the literature on nutrition topics of interest to them. Advances in, and the limitations of, research and our understanding of nutrition is discussed.
Introduction to Nutrition, Athletics 190, 1 unit, 2007-present
The nutrition component of what was previously Athletics 74 (see below). Introduction to Nutrition and Exercise, Athletics 74, 2 units, 2003-2006
Created a new course describing the theory and application of nutrition and exercise based on a survey of the literature. Annual guest lecturer in Human Biology courses, 2002-present
HumBio 120, Human Nutrition (Prof. Christopher Gardner), lectures on sports nutrition and correlations to health. HumBio 155, Exercise Physiology (Prof. Anne Friedlander), lectures on nutrition and exercise biochemistry.

RESEARCH

University of California, San Francisco

Laboratory of Professor Roger Cooke Research Associate, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, 2006-present
Post-doctoral Fellow, Cardiovascular Research Institute, 2002-2006
-Investigating the molecular mechanisms of skeletal muscle activation and metabolism

NON-PROFIT WORK

Sports Medicine Institute (a Public Benefit Nonprofit Corporation), Palo Alto, CA, 2003-present

EDUCATION

Stanford University Department of Chemistry, 1996-2002 Nerve signaling and the impact of omega-3 fats

Northern Arizona University (NAU), Flagstaff, AZ, 1993-1996 American Chemical Society Certified Bachelors of Science in Chemistry

United States Naval Schools Naval Radiological Controls Supervisor School, Charleston, SC, 1992 Nuclear Power Training Unit, Idaho Falls, ID, 1998-1989 Naval Nuclear Power School, Orlando, Fl, 1987-1988

UNITED STATES NAVAL SERVICE United States Navy, USS Carl Vinson Aircraft Carrier, Alameda, CA, 1987-1993 Supervisor of Reactor Laboratories, in charge of all chemistry and radiological controls Chief Reactor Watch, in charge of mechanical watch stations in the reactor plant Nuclear Quality Assurance Supervisor